A rally in Los Angeles drew hundreds to stand in solidarity with Charlottesville. The group gathered at City Hall then marched to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles Sunday, August 13, 2017. ( Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

They mourned. They marched. They demanded leadership and accountability.

Southern California residents of various ages, backgrounds and faiths condemned bigotry and violence a day after an Ohio man allegedly plowed his car into a crowd that had been protesting a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed as she crossed the street and at least 19 others were injured.

“I can’t sit home and just be ignorant to what’s happening even though it might not be directly affecting me,” said Zoya Abbas, 17, of South Pasadena at a rally and march that drew hundreds outside Los Angeles City Hall on Sunday.

“This might not be my community (that was targeted by white supremacists),” the Muslim teen of Pakistani descent said. “But I still have to stand up for them because I want someone to stand up for mine.”

Michelle Xai, an organizer with the anti-Trump group Refuse Fascism Los Angeles that organized the rally, said they were there to condemn “these murdering Nazi thugs” who openly took to the streets over the weekend in an attempt to “unite the right.” But they were also there to honor Heyer, whom Xai called a “brave heroic person” who had joined hundreds of others to counterprotest “these open terrorists.”

Meanwhile, about 100 people marched around Orange Plaza Square Park in Old Towne Orange late Sunday afternoon in the wake of the Charlottesville incident.

Organizer Lisa Pedersen of Tustin said she wanted them to convey a unified message “that we do not tolerate … racism.”

“We stand up for the people in Charlottesville,” Pedersen said at the rally, where protesters held up signs such as “Love trumps hate” and “If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention.”

As people marched around the square for about an hour, they exchanged words with Sarah Bradford of Orange who shouted “Stop practicing hate!”

Similar rallies and vigils also took place Sunday in downtown Long Beach, Temecula, Redlands and Riverside.

“When I saw the reports from Charlottesville, I couldn’t believe it. I was devastated,” said Ashley Moulder of Long Beach Indivisible, one of the organizers of the rally in downtown Long Beach. “I knew we had to do something. We can’t give in to this kind of hatred.”

Saturday’s violence “was heartbreaking,” said organizer Cindy Bustos of Temecula Rise and Resist at the “unity rally” at the edge of Duck Pond in Temecula.

“We knew watching these people, these brave souls, that it could have been any of us,” she said.

In Riverside, a candlelight vigil took place at 6 p.m. on the Main Street pedestrian mall outside City Hall, where an altar was expected to be set up for Heyer.

Social media posts showed people started leaving chalk messages on the sidewalk on Saturday night such as “No fear, no hate” and “Unite in love.”

“You don’t have to be strong to fight hatred — you just have to have the will and courage,” said one message.

At the largely African-American Calvary Baptist Church of Pacoima, Deacon Reche Pilot said these hate groups, including the KKK, white nationalists, and white supremacists need to be “shut down.”

“We’re looking for the president to totally and fully denounce these actions of these groups and to call them out for who they are,” Pilot, speaking only for himself, said before Sunday morning services.

Pilot added that they were praying for everyone affected, even for the white supremacists “that they [may] have a change of heart in what they’re trying to spread, knowing in the end they’re not going to prevail anyway.”

Trump drew criticism after initially condemning “this egregious display” of hatred, bigotry and violence “on many sides” following Saturday’s attack on anti-white supremacy demonstrators. A spokesman noted in a statement to the press Sunday that it “of course includes white supremacists, KKK Neo-Nazi and all extremist groups.”

The nation is not only experiencing a resurgence of white nationalism but the dangerous coalescence of what was once a “rag-tag collection of disorganized groups with feuding leaders,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.

“Now, they can come all together to a place like Charlottesville and they are emboldened,” Levin said. “It’s not only the size of the gatherings [that is significant], it’s how many of their leaders are coming together brazenly … to do Nazi-esque marches at one of America’s pre-eminent institutions founded by [former U.S. President Thomas] Jefferson.”

Hundreds of torch-bearing demonstrators also marched through the University of Virginia, Jefferson’s alma mater, in Charlottesville on Friday night to protest the city’s plan to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Levin also called on Trump to personally condemn white nationalism and white supremacy as being counter to the moral foundations of our nation.

“He has not objectively done that in a meaningful way,” he argued. “It’s been tepid.”

B. Grant, a Lake View Terrace resident who has attended Calvary Baptist Church in Pacoima for more than 55 years, called the white supremacist rally in Virginia and the subsequent attack “disgraceful,” particularly in this day and age. Several years ago, she said, her own car was spray-painted with the N-word.

“We should have come farther as a nation when it comes to race relations, and it should have been addressed a long time ago,” she said. “To get anywhere with [racism], it has to come from the top.”

Staff writers By Alicia Robinson and Tomoya Shimura contributed to this report.

Brenda Gazzar is a multilingual multimedia reporter who has worked for a variety of news outlets in California and in the Middle East since 2000. She has covered a range of issues, including breaking news, immigration, law and order, race, religion and gender issues, politics, human interest stories and education. Besides the Los Angeles Daily News and its sister papers, her work has been published by Reuters, the Denver Post, Ms. Magazine, the Jerusalem Post, USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, The Cairo Times and others. Brenda speaks Spanish, Hebrew and intermediate Arabic and is the recipient of national, state and regional awards, including a National Headliners Award and one from the Associated Press News Executives' Council. She holds a dual master's degree in Communications/Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

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